Egelric talks to the elf

“You are remarkably patient for a boy,” Egelric said finally. His voice dragged through his throat like a rasp, and his tongue lay like a half-​​dead thing in his mouth. What was wrong with him?

The boy relaxed visibly. “More patient than you: a man.” So he would mock him.

“Who are you?”

The boy cocked his head with an apologetic frown and said nothing.

“Where are we?”

“We are in a cave in the hills, not far from your little house.”

“What do you know of – so!”

Egelric interrupted himself, for in brushing his unruly hair back from his face, the boy had momentarily revealed a feature Egelric knew very well – the tip of a pointed ear.

“Elf!” he snarled.

The boy appeared startled. “I thought you knew,” he began to say, but he had to duck as Egelric took a wild swing at his head. “I shan’t hurt you!” he cried from his crouch.

“I shall!” Egelric lumbered forward to grab at him, but he was slow and aching, and the boy easily darted away.

“I’ve done nothing to you!” he protested.

“Where are my knives?” Egelric rasped.

“You shall have them when I leave you. You see that I was right to take them from you.” He seemed amused, which only enraged Egelric further.

“Why have you brought me here?”

“I brought you here to get you warm and dry. You fell through the ice, don’t you remember?” The boy crept cautiously back before him.

Egelric knew that he couldn’t hurt the lad if he couldn’t catch him, and he didn’t seem likely to catch him in the condition in which he found himself. And so he let the boy return.

He did not remember falling through ice. He did not remember how he came to be here – nor could he explain what he had been doing before. It didn’t make sense… he thought he had been walking on the moon. But that was only his father’s story.

“Were you trying to die?” the boy asked. “You didn’t even struggle.”

“I thought I would only sink in to my knees,” he mumbled, still trying to sort it all out himself.

“To your knees?” the boy laughed. “The lake is so deep that light never reaches the bottom, although you nearly did.”

“And you saved me,” Egelric sneered. “And then you carried me down here, all alone. Where are the rest of you?”

“We are alone.”

“I don’t believe it,” he said, and then he stopped and stumbled away to cough. The cough tore from the depths of his lungs to the top of his throat like a rasp and brought tears to his eyes and made his nose run.

“Be careful,” the boy said gently. “You’ve been breathing cold water, and now you have a fever.”

“I shall be careful,” he spat. “Who are you?”

“I’m an elf.”

“I can see that. What do you want?”

“I only want to help you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I have reasons. I am not supposed to help you, you know. But you are not supposed to be wandering out onto the ice. You are a very unusual man. Did you want to die?”

“Perhaps I didn’t care.”

“Wouldn’t your daughter care?”

“What do you know of my daughter?” Egelric cried, driven to fury again, and the fury drove him to another fit of coughing.

The boy waited for him to finish, and then said, “I knew her when she was a baby.”

“Stay away from my daughter!” Egelric growled. Another elf had driven him to distraction by speaking of his family.

“I do stay away from your daughter.”

“One of you has been speaking with her,” Egelric said miserably, his anger fading into hopelessness. “You mean to take her from me.”

“No one shall take her.”

“Why couldn’t you let her be? We were happy…” he said, beginning to cry. He turned away at first in shame, but then he thought that it didn’t matter. The elf could laugh… the elf could cut him to pieces – it didn’t matter.

But the elf only stood and watched him cry like a child.

“Have you seen my son?” he whimpered then, too wretched to bother trying to keep up any semblance of strength or presence of mind.

“Yes. He is well.”

“Take me to him.”

“I cannot. I am sorry.”

“Who has him? Where is he?”

“He is safe. He – ” The elf hesitated for a moment. “You must tell no one you have seen me. Not the men and not the elves.”

“Where is my son?”

“If you promise me that you won’t tell, I shall tell you a little about your son. Would you like that? Will you promise?” The boy spoke to him as if he were a sulking child to be soothed with a treat.

“Have you seen him?”

“I have seen him. Let us sit before the fire and I shall tell you about him. Will you give me your word?”

Egelric nodded mutely and sat, and the elf sat beside him and told him about his son.

He told him how much Finn resembled him in the face, and how seriously he took everything, and how he always stopped to reflect before doing anything naughty or dangerous, but always did it in the end anyway. He told him how he hated to be dirty – just like Elfleda, Egelric thought – and how he loved his baths: he would stay in the water and play until he was wrinkled and white if one would let him. He told him how Finn had a pet rabbit named Toes, and a toy rabbit named Ears who slept with him at night – and how he had sucked not his thumb, but his first two fingers as a baby, and how he did still, sometimes, when he was tired or sad, and fingered Ears’s ears with the other hand until he fell asleep.

For the first time, Egelric was able to imagine his son as he would be now, at four, and not still as the tiny baby he had been when he had been taken. He begged for details – was his hair blue-​​black like his, or did it have a reddish cast? It was blue-​​black. Were his fingers square like his, or long and slender like Elfleda’s? They were not long, but they were small and pretty. How tall was he? How heavy was he? Was he a picky eater? What did his laugh sound like?

Egelric could have gone on like that for hours, but it was not enough. He needed to know where he was, how he could get to him… and so he tried to ask questions that might lead the boy to give information about where he was, or who had him. But his mind was too slow, and the boy’s too quick, and his coughing fits were coming more frequently, and that pain was beginning to blot out the rest of his thoughts.

“You’re ill,” the boy said suddenly. “There’s an illness among the men just now. They have been burying children.”

“Children?” Egelric mumbled.

“You have a fever. Is that why you went out onto the ice? Did you know what you were doing?”

“My daughter?”

“Your daughter is not unwell.”

“How do you know?” Egelric growled.

“I like to watch the men. I don’t intend to talk to her or to anyone else. You needn’t worry. You should sleep now. I shan’t talk to you any longer, so you might as well. We might bring your skin closer to the fire if you like, but I don’t want you falling in. I can’t do much to help you if you fall into the fire,” he chuckled. “Do you need help getting up?” he asked as Egelric began to cough again.

“I can manage.” He stood painfully and walked over to the corner in which he had awoken. “What’s your name, boy?” he grumbled once he had stretched out on the skin.

“I can’t tell you that. But you may call me Ears,” he laughed.

“Why did you save me, boy?”

As promised, the elf sat before the fire and spoke to him no longer.

“Boy? Ears? Why?” He grunted after a further silence and then turned his face to the wall. “I’m not sure I shall forgive you for it.”